Baidu Inc (百度), owner of China’s most-used search-engine, released a new Internet browser for mobile devices running Google Inc’s Android system that allows users to play Web games and watch videos without a media player.
The Baidu Explorer was announced by Li Mingyuan (李明遠), general manager of the company’s Mobile & Cloud Computing division, at its annual developer conference in Beijing yesterday. The program is about 20 percent faster than previously available mobile browsers, he said.
Li is counting on the software to help make the company the gateway for people in China accessing the Internet on handsets as it is for desktop users. Baidu overcame competition from Google to win almost 80 percent of the nation’s search-engine market by sales. Now the company’s core business is under threat from Qihoo 360 Technology Co (奇虎360), maker of China’s most-used browser, which started its own search engine last month.
In the second quarter, Baidu accounted for 78.6 percent of China’s search-engine market by revenue, compared with 15.7 percent for Google, according to estimates by researcher Analysys International in Beijing.
Having control of the browser will help Baidu drive more traffic through its own search engine, while also offering more control over the quality of the user experience, Li said.
There are now about 100,000 Web applications that can be run through the mobile browser without installing additional software, allowing users greater choice of programs without consuming memory on the handset, according to Baidu.
The new browser is available for download in both English and Chinese. It is compatible with Android 2.2 and higher versions, and is not currently available for Apple Inc’s iOS system used on the iPhone.
Baidu will also invest more than 10 billion yuan (US$1.6 billion) in cloud computing over the coming years, its chief financial officer said yesterday.
The investment will go toward building data centers and hiring staff for its online data-storage service, Baidu said in a statement, quoting Li Xinzhe (李昕晢), but without giving details.
Six Taiwanese companies, including contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), made the 2025 Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest firms by revenue. In a report published by New York-based Fortune magazine on Tuesday, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. (better known as Foxconn) ranked highest among Taiwanese firms, placing 28th with revenue of US$213.69 billion. Up 60 spots from last year, TSMC rose 60 places to reach No. 126 with US$90.16 billion in revenue, followed by Quanta Computer Inc. at 348th, Pegatron Corp. at 461st, CPC Corp., Taiwan at 494th and Wistron Corp. at 496th. According to Fortune, the world’s
NEW PRODUCTS: MediaTek plans to roll out new products this quarter, including a flagship mobile phone chip and a GB10 chip that it is codeveloping with Nvidia Corp MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday projected that revenue this quarter would dip by 7 to 13 percent to between NT$130.1 billion and NT$140 billion (US$4.38 billion and US$4.71 billion), compared with NT$150.37 billion last quarter, which it attributed to subdued front-loading demand and unfavorable foreign exchange rates. The Hsinchu-based chip designer said that the forecast factored in the negative effects of an estimated 6 percent appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar against the greenback. “As some demand has been pulled into the first half of the year and resulted in a different quarterly pattern, we expect the third quarter revenue to decline sequentially,”
WEAKER ACTIVITY: The sharpest deterioration was seen in the electronics and optical components sector, with the production index falling 13.2 points to 44.5 Taiwan’s manufacturing sector last month contracted for a second consecutive month, with the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) slipping to 48, reflecting ongoing caution over trade uncertainties, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The decline reflects growing caution among companies amid uncertainty surrounding US tariffs, semiconductor duties and automotive import levies, and it is also likely linked to fading front-loading activity, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “Some clients have started shifting orders to Southeast Asian countries where tariff regimes are already clear,” Lien told a news conference. Firms across the supply chain are also lowering stock levels to mitigate
DIVERSIFYING: Taiwanese investors are reassessing their preference for US dollar assets and moving toward Europe amid a global shift away from the greenback Taiwanese investors are reassessing their long-held preference for US-dollar assets, shifting their bets to Europe in the latest move by global investors away from the greenback. Taiwanese funds holding European assets have seen an influx of investments recently, pushing their combined value to NT$13.7 billion (US$461 million) as of the end of last month, the highest since 2019, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Over the first half of this year, Taiwanese investors have also poured NT$14.1 billion into Europe-focused funds based overseas, bringing total assets up to NT$134.8 billion, according to data from the Securities Investment Trust and Consulting Association (SITCA),
RSS